1. The “R” Statistical Package Naomi Altman Dept. of Statistics PSU

2. What is R? R is a “freeware” version of the S or Splus package. R is available on Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux. R follows the “toolbox” philosophy – provide the tools and components and let the users build the machines. Currently, R has lots of built-in “machines” (i.e. statistical methods) and many developers contributing free software – in particular, genomics, proteomics and spatial software.

3. R vs SAS, Minitab and others Strengths of R Good algorithms User community with listserv Very extensible – open source Excellent graphics Lots of contributed special purpose software (e.g. bioinformatics, spatial statistics …) Weaknesses of R “Hacker-friendly” Documentation is scattered User-contributed software can be idiosyncratic Very slow Poor memory management

4. Downloading R (www.r-project.org)

6. Installing R Click on the appropriate platform. On Windows: Download the.exe file. (Note that for some packages you may want an older version.) Run the.exe file from the start menu.

7. Summary R is easy to: obtain install extend The learning curve is long. R is slow compared to platforms like Perl, C++, etc.